
(lass tL L+~Lf&) 
Book ' / SZ 



THE AMERICAN BOARD AND AMERICAN 
SLAVERY. 



SPEECH 

OF 

THEODORE TILTON 



» t 



X M 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH, BROOKLYN 



January 28, 1860, 



Reported by •$> i^^NBil Bsrb. 



NOTE; 

At the late annual meeting of the Plymouth Church, Brook'ya, 
held at the beginning of the present year, a discussion aro?e, which 
was protracted to five evenings, respecting the use to be made of 
funds collected for Foreign Missions. The main question at issue was 
involved in the following resolution: 

" Resolved, That this Church contribute no more money to 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions." 

The ground of this proposed discontinuance of contributions to ths 
American Board was the alleged complicity of that corporation 
the system of American Slavery, by sustaining slaveholding Mission 
Churches among the North American Indians. 

On the fourth night of the debate, the pastor of the Church, tha 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, made an address, two hours in length, 
maintaining — 

"That the Ameiican Board was the proper depository of the con- 
tributions of Plymouth Church for Foreign Missions; that the Boaid 
had. to an unparalleled degree, kept pace with public sentiment on 
the subject of slavery; that it now held auti slavery doctrines, and 
ha<i faithfully and consistently applied these ' octrines to missionary 
work- and that its record, on this whole subject, "was clean, 
and pure." 

At the conclusion of his speech, Mr. Tiltou obtained the floor for 
an immediate reply, but gave way, owing to the lateness of the hour, 
to a motion for adjournment; with the understanding that he should 
open the debate on the following evening. The geceral interest 
excited by the discussion drew together, on the closing night, an 
audience that crowdod the large edifice in every part. Mr. Tilton's* 
argument, in replv, is given in full in the fallowing pages. At the 
close of its delivery, Mr. Beecher added a rejoinder, after which, the 
"previous question " was called, and the vote taktn. The result 
was (for various reasons, Dot unexpectedly) a majority : n favor of 
the American Boarl. 



IN BXCHrvNGB 



SPEECH 



THEODORE TILTON 



My very dear frieud, to whose speech I now undertake 
to reply, was so frank and generous, last Monday evening s 
ia his allusions to some of the young men of this Church, 
who, growing up for years under his teachings, had at 
last found themstlves differing in certain points from their 
teacher, that I cannot but tarry a moment, at the threshold 
of my argument, to thank him for his kindness. I thick, 
sir, you will agree with me, it was characteristic of the 
maa. It was a fresh instance of that large-heartedness, 
that generosity, that warmth of nature that have won for 
him the admiration and affection not only of the young 
men of his Church, but of the old men— and not only of 
his Church, but everywhere. I remember reading of a 
nobleman of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, who thought 
it a sufficient honor to himself to be called " the frieud of 
Sir Philip Sidney." On very many occasions, both in 
*private and in public, 1 have been received into new eir- 
clea of society as the friend of the pastor of this Church ; 
and I am sure that never in my life have I been more 
proud of any introduction ! When Louis Kossuth called 
Walter Savage Landor his friend, the old poet lifted up 
his hands and exclaimed, " Henceforth, no man can honor 
me ! " I need not say to any member of this Church that 
I love its minister, almost as I love no other man ! Nor 
need I say that when 1 come tonight to speak in opposi« 
lion to bis views, it is from no lack of good-fellowship or 



i 

good feeliag towards him ; for, standing in this pulpit, in 
the presence of this Church which has grown up under 
his labors and his prayers, I humbly now invoke upon 
him the blessing of God, and pray that he may be 
sustained with unabated strength in his noble and suc- 
cessful service in this Church of Jesus Christ, until, after 
many years, he shall be as old and white-haired as that 
venerable man, his father, who now, past four-score, has 
travelled up so near to the summit of the Mount of 
Vision that his head is already among its snows, waiting 
to break through into the glory beyond ! 

My friend's generous words, on Monday night, were of 
themselves a sufficient rebuke to those gentlemen who so 
privately, yet industriously, have labored to make it ap- 
pear, to the minds of many on whose votes shall rest the 
decision of this debate, that when a young man in this 
Church ventures to speak a word in opposition to words 
spokeu by the minister, the act is to ba frowned upon as 
presumptuous and impertinent. I come to this platform 
because, haviug been a member of this Church for well 
nigh seven years, the teachings which I have received in 
this place, delivered from this desk, have led me hither by 
their own natural force. For I may iruly say that I am 
indebted for my anti-slavery convictions to the instruc- 
tions of the pastor of this Church. It is, therefore, Mr. 
Beecher's own strong right band that has drawn me to 
the opposite side of this question ! I never have believed 
in the old dogma that the " king can do no wrong," nor 
will I believe in the newer dogma, which seems to prevail 
to a too great extent throughout the Church, that the* 
" minister can say no wrong." Therefore I speak, and 
speak freely. 

In the beginning, I beg to remind the audience that 
this discussion, although it be with respect to the disposi- 
tion of collected funds, is nevertheless not one of money, 
but of principle. I say this to disabuse the mind of my 
friend, the Rev. Mr. Field, of The Evangelist, whom I 
met yesterday at dinner, and who proposed, as the easiest 
solution of our difficulties, that we should settle the 



question by "dividing the money among the principal 
speakers ! " (Laughter). 

The main question — not the technical question, but the 
main question which underlies this discussion — the great 
illuminated background against which the present subject 
stands out in strong relief — is the system of American 
slavery and the relation which the American Church 
bears, and ought to bear, to it. 

I need not, to-night, characterize with any new terms 
of condemnation that system which crushes down four 
millions of human beings, in this nation, to a level so low 
that other men's feet are set upon their necks ! I will 
not draw any fresh picture of its horrors ! It is enough 
to say that it is a system which denies to men their own 
manhood ; that strikes down womanhood with despoiling 
lust ; that lays violent hands on little children, disregard- 
ing every plea of pity ; that sunders every sacred, domes 
tic tie ; that, with cruel oppression, crushes down God's 
children, and, in the moment of its cruelty, points to God's 
Word for precedent, and to God's Church for the protect- 
ing shadow of its spire ! I call your attention to the fact 
that the American Church is in complicity with this sys- 
tem to an extent which you will scarcely credit when I 
give you the facts and figures. Listen a moment ! I 
have an authentic table of statistics, from which it appears 
that the number of slaves owned by ministers and mem- 
bers of the Methodist Church is— bow many do you 
think? Why, 219,000! 

Mr. Beechkr— That i?, I suppose, in the Methodist 
Church South ? 

Mr. Tilton— No, sir ; in the Church South and M orth 
together ; for both hold slaves. The number of si: 
owned by ministers and members of the Presbyterian 
Church, Old School and New, is 77,000 ; by I 
125,000; by Reformed Baptists (I don't think they are 
altogether reformed), 101,000 ; by Episcopalians, 88,000 ; 
by all other denominations (and 1 am glad that in the 
paper from which 1 read our own denomination is not put 
down by name), about 55,000 ; making altogether a sum 



total of more than 600,000 human beiDgs— men, women 
and children !— for whom the walla of the Christian 
Church are only a prison ! Think of it ! In this nine- 
teenth century, after the gospel of Christianity has been 
tor nearly two thousand years woikiDg its way iDto the 
hearts of meD, the Church— claiming Christ as its founder, 
and attempting to lead men aloDg the only way to the 
gate of Heaven— holds six hundred thousand human 
beiDgs in personal and life long bondage to it3 ministers 
and members! I do not wonder that Albert Barnes 
eaid, if it were not for the American Ohnrch, American 
slavery could not exist for an hour ! You must remem- 
ber, too, that this great multitude of slaves, held by 
church-members and church-ministers, are held every- 
where uDder one and the same pretence. The universal 
plea is that "the circumstances are justifiable"! No 
slaveholder who communes with a Church will dare to 
open his mouth and say to the world that he holds his 
slaves as the mass cf slave-owners outside the Church 
hold theirs. He denies that Le keep3 his human property 
for his selfish profit, and puts forth, instead, the miserable 
pretence that his oppression is meant for the slaves' moral 
and religious instruction, and their highest spiritual good ! 
Nothing is more common in the Church than the apology 
that slavery is a benign missionary institution ! 

Now, I wish this Church to aid in no way, not even 
by the smallest contribution, any Society or JBoard that 
is in complicity with this cruel system. I shall attempt 
to prove that the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions is at this moment in complicity with 
this wrong and crime. If I prove this, it will, of course, 
fillow tnat this Church ought at once to sever its con- 
nection with this Board. 

But, in the first place, allow me to express my surprise 
at the way iu which my friend undertook to vindicate the 
Americun Board. One of his strong arguments— and it 
Btruck me with great astonishment I— was that this was 
a •' venerable institution"! I say it struck me with 
astonishment ; for I have beard him declare, iu this very 
1* 



pulpit, that he " would never be moved by reverence one 
step even towards the worship of God ! " Nay, sir, 
standiog in the presence of hoary institutions that have 
claimed honor on account of age, he has always exclaimed, 
" No 1 I have iron knees ! I will not bow down ! " And 
yet, on Monday night, be said, and repeated it again and 
again, " The American Board is a- venerable institution ! " 
Sir, what if it be venerable ? It is not therefore sacred ! 
My friend will pardon me if I say that when he offered 
that vindication, I took it as a sarcasm — equalled only by 
the exquisite humor that lay unconsciously hid under an- 
other argument which he immediately afterward alleged, 
that he loved the American Board because, in his early 
life, he had driven fast horses with some of the mission- 
aries ! (Laughter.) 

But the most significant part of my friend's address 
was his plea for the admission of slaveholders into the 
Church. I confess, sir, this was new to me ! For during 
seven years past, up to Monday night, if anybody bad 
asked me, " Would Plymouth Church, under any circum- 
stances, admit a slaveholder to its membership?" I 
would have answered most unqualifiedly, " No." I do 
not now refer to Mr. Beecher's ingenious and adroit 
explanation of " immediate emancipation," nor to his 
very humorous references, often made in this pulpit, to 
" slavery per se." The question is not whether it is pos- 
sible instantaneously, without a moment's flight of time 
between the will and the deed, for a slaveholder to eman- 
cipate his slave ; nor whether you cannot conceive of a 
case of slavebolding which is not a sin per se ; but whe- 
ther a Christian Church, looking upon men who own and 
hold slaves, shall take to herself, what the world will be 
very ready to give, the reproach of their admission into 
her fellowship ! For, granting, for the argument's sake, 
that a slaveholder may, in some rare, infrequent instance, 
hold to day without guilt a slave whom he means to set 
free to-morrow — holding him not as a B we, but as a man 
— holding him not in a moral enslavement, but under the 
mere hollow shell of some legal bond that cannot at this 



moment be broken — granting that there can be such a 
case (and no one will deny that there may, although 
the owner i3 then the unwilling master of a volun- 
tary slave, and therefore not a slaveholder, but a man- 
holder), the question is, Shall such a man, standing in suoh 
a relation, be received into a Cnurch which is commanded 
to obey the apostolic injunction to avoid even the appear- 
ance of evil ? 

Now, this is the best possible or supposable case. But 
in fifteen free States, even such a possible case is made 
impossible on their own soil ; for if a slave be brought 
into New York, by his master's consent, the slave is free 
by law, the moment he crosses the line. A master can- 
not bring his slave into a free State under such a regula- 
tion as my friend proposes to establish for a Church, 
If, therefore, when a State says to a master, bringing his 
slave across its borders, " The slave is free ! " do we make 
any extraordinary demand when we turn to the Church 
and ask it to say the same thing? to say that when 
a alaveholding church-member, standing in his pew, 
turns round and sees his own slave coming up the aisle 
to take a seat at the communion-table, the Church should 
call out to the slave, as the State calls out, " From the 
moment you have crossed my threshold, you are free I " 
Tell me, sir, shall the Christian Church be behind the 
legislative progress of fifteen States? 

A slaveholder is a man and something more — a man 
with a chattel. Now, I would make the doors of the 
Church 80 narrow that when the man tries to get in, the 
chattel that clings to him shall be rubbed off and dropped 
behind 1 

But do you tell me that it is illiberal to exclude from 
a Church a slaveowner who can prove that he stands in 
this supposable innocent relation to his slave ? I reply 
that if the Church were itself liberal in all other respects 
— if it were to break down its high strong walls and 
widen its platform to all the world — if an evangelical 
Church would admit a Christian man to membership 
even if he were a Unitarian or a Uoiveraalist— if an 



orthodox congregation would give their fellowship and 
open their membership to a sincere and devout Roman 
Catholic (and my friend has said, in this pulpit, that 
many a Roman Catholic has been a sincere Christian) — 
then, I say, I will have no objection to the admission into 
the Church of a pious and devout slaveholder, whenever 
you can find such a rarity in the land! Bat so long as 
a Church employs a committee to sit at its gates, as the 
elders sat at the gates of Jerusalem, to make inquisition 
of every man who knocks for admission — to inquire of 
every new applicant what is his belief, and what is his 
practice — so long as no man is allowed to come in who 
denies certain articles in our creed, or who indulges in 
certain sins and peceadillo3S which our Church condemns— 
so long as the Church determines to be stringent with her 
candidates in all these respects, then, sir, I say, let her be 
equally stringent in her inquiries of every man who comes 
to her threshold carrying in his hands the symbols of bon- 
dage by which he holds his fellow-men under the yoke ! 
That is all 1 ask ! 

Is this unreasonable ? Look at it ! A man applies 
for admission to this Church. My friend, Mr. CorniDg, is 
a member of the Examining Committee. He puts close 
questions to the stranger. Mr. Corning is a well known 
temperance man ; and he asks, " Do you use intoxicating 
liquors as a beverage ? " or " Do you sell liquor ? " 
** Yes, sir," is the reply. " Then you cannot come into 
the membership of this Church." " But," says the man 
to my friend, quesiioniog him in return, " do you believe 
that to drink a glass of wine is a sin per se ? " Mr. 
Corning cannot say " yes." " Do you believe tbat to sell 
a gallon of whiskey is a sin per se ? " Mr. Corning can- 
not say " yes." Nevertheless, Mr. Corning does not 
hesitate to declare that the man must not be admitted i 
But when, instead of a rumseller, there comes a slave- 
holder knocking at the door of Christ's fold, what is Mr. 
Coming's reply ? Why, Mr. Corning would ask him a 
few preliminary questions about justificatory circum- 
stances, and then say, " Come in ! come in ! " But, sir, 



: 10 

if you exclude a dram-drinker, without stopping to prove 
a sin per se, how can you admit a slaveholder, under the 
apology of no sin per se ? 

Bat Mr. Corning took especial pains to say, a few 
evenings asro, that he would stand on the platform of the 
Temperance Society side by side with slaveholders. Sup- 
pos3 he would ; what has that to do with standing side by 
side with them in the Church ? No Christian profes- 
sion is required of a man who enters the Temperance 
Bociety. if only he be oppossd to strong drink, he may 
believe in every heresy that ever a Church barred out 
of its creed. Yet, when Mr. Corning spoke so warmly 
and earnestly of a certain Southern slaveholder, whom 
he almost mentioned by name — a man prominent in the 
Temperance Union — a man with whom, as he said, he 
was not ashamed to stand anywhere, by which I suppose 
he meant in the Church or out, I could not help saying 
to myself, "Ah! Mr. Corning, I can tell you a story of 
that "man ! " Let me tell it now ! The man is a Judge 
in a Southern Court. A negro was once brought before 
him for trial, whose offence consisted in having fallen iu 
love with a slave girl, and in afterward atttmpting to 
steal her away by night to marry her. He was caught, 
convicted and sentenced. And what was the sentence ? 
It was the dark decree of death /—as if the crime had 
been murder 1 When the Judge was written to in remon- 
strance by some gentlemen in the North, he replied, by 
return mail, that be had awarded the sentence on the 
authority of the Holy Bible— adding, " I am surprised 
that you should have overlooked the text : ' Ha that 
stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his 
hands, he shall surely be put to death ! ' " Now, it may 
be vtry safe lor Mr. Corning to call this gentleman to 
his side, to stand with him in mutual cooperation on the 
Temperance platform, but what would Mr. Coming's 
friends in this Church say if they were to see him calling 
out to this same chivalric South Carolina Judge to come 
and sit by his side at the communion-table spread out in 
front ef this pulpit, and under this roof! 



11 

Bat, sir, we are not called upon to deal with romantic, 
ideal cases of slavebolding, where the bondage is no 
bondage, but only the shadow of it. We are called upon 
to deal with slavery as black men experience it at the 
hands of red men ; slavery in which slaves are held 
not because it is impossible to free them ; not because 
they could not take care of themselves if they were free ; 
not because they are old or infirm ; but because the mas- 
ters who own them would lose their market-value by 
emancipating them ; because they are house-servants who 
are still every day needed to do the service of the house ; 
because, belonging to owners, their owners require that 
they should be put to a profitable use. I need not say 
that they are inhumanely treated. I do not mean that 
any man shall trip m3 up to-night on the easy charge that 
I am a fanatic. These slaves, on whose slavery falls the 
solemn and silent shadow of the American Board, are 
held in the same common bondage with the great mass 
of their brethren who suffer servitude at the hands of 
ministers and members of the great American Church. 
In a word, they are deprived of their liberty without 
their consent. This is enough, even if nothing else be 
added. It is against such slaveboldiDg as this— actual, 
not imaginary— real, and not ideal — that I aek this 
Church to bear its testimony. 

Now, sir, I had always suppo?ed that, holding these 
views, 1 held them in common with the pastor of thi3 
Church. A remark was reported to me the other day, 
since this discussion began, that when the Congregational 
Church in the other district of this city, of which a 
brother of Mr. Beecher was chosen minister, met in coun- 
cil to decide upon a form of government, the inquiry 
arose as to whether they should put into the covenant a 
provision in reference to the exclusion of slaveholders. 
Our pastor said, " In the covenant of Plymouth Church, 
there is no fuch provision ; but we have an examining 
committee who are sharp enough to detect any rumseller 
or slaveholder ; and you may be sure that neither the one 
nor the other would ever get in ! " Moreover, I have the 



12 

printed testimony of tbe pastor of this Church in which 
he denies the very position be took tbe other night ! I 
can quote Henry Ward Beeeher against Henry Ward 
Beecber (laughter). Listen while I read from a report 
of a speech delivered from thia desk, and on this very 
subject, in tbe year 1855. After speaking of tbe Ameri 
can Home Missionary Society, he says : 

" But there is another Society that solicits your bene- 
factions — the American Missionary Association. Tbis is 
an Anti-Slavery Missionary Society, and a large number 
of you, I know, are interested in it;. It has missionaries 
in tbe slave States, who establish Churches that refuse fel- 
lowship with slaveholders. That is right; they ovght to be 

BARRED OCT EVERYWHERE ! " 

Now, this is quoting the gentleman point blank against 
himself. Well, what does it mean ? It means tbis. In 
1855 a slaveholder knocks at tbe door of Plymouth 
Church, and Mr. Baeeber, bearing the rap, say?, "Bar 
bim out ! " In the year 1860 the slaveholder knocks at 
the same door, and Mr. Beecber, after five years' reflec- 
tion, s^ys, " Let him in ! " 

A Voice — No! 

Mr. Tilton — No ? Let me report the rumors of the 
streets and the mirket-place 1 Wherever I go, whether 
in the stage, in the railroad car, in tbe ferry-boat, or on 
foot up and down tbe streets, I am perpetually accosted 
with the question, " Is tbe pastor of Plymouth Church 
changing his views? Is Mr. Beecber growing more con- 
servative?" I have always answered these salutatious 
with an emphatic No ; and until Monday night 1 always 
believed No. But what am I now to say if my friend 
puts up tbe bars in 1855, only to let them down in 1860 ? 
Martin Luther nailed to tbe church door at Wittemberg 
his ninety-five propositions and challenged all tbe world 
to dispute tbem. I have many a time beard tbe pastor 
of tbis Church called the new Martin Luther of the nine- 
teenth century. Five years ago, he nailed upon hi 
church door the declaration that no rumseller or slave- 
bolder should be admitted to fellowship inside. Does he 



13 

now tear down the parchment that has been hanging on 
these doors ever since I kDew this Church ? Nay, sir, will 
he pluck away the greenest, leaves of the laurel that has 
been growing greener and greener about his head for thirty 
years? Everjbudy asks, " Is he changing?" I reply 
only, " Everybody says he is ! " I beg of him, if this be 
an unjust impression which everybody hold3, to rid the 
public mind of it at once ; I beg of him to clear away 
soch an imputation — in justice to himself, in justice to 
this Church, in justice to the Lord Jesus whose minister 
he is ! 

Now, sir, I charge the American Board with compli- 
city wi*h slavery because it sustains the Cherokee mis 
eion. Darin? the last ten or fifteen years, there has been, 
among the Cbnrches that patronize the Board, a discus- 
sion on the subject of the Choctaw and Cherokee mis- 
sions. The anti-slavery sentiment has always been 
directed against these two missions, as putting the Board 
in complicity with slavery. Lust year, the Choctaw 
mission was cut off— for what reasons 1 will not here state. 
The general impression among the Churches is that the 
Cherokee mission was cut off with the Choctaw, and 
that, therefore, no slavery now remains, to subject the 
Board any longer to the charge of oppression. Only 
yesterday, I met the Eev. Mr. Houghton, editor of the 
American Presbyterian, who said to me, " What are you 
discussing in your Church ? " I replied, " The complicity 
of the American Board with slavery in its missions 
among the Indians." " But," said be, "the Board have 
cut off the Choctaws, and have so cut off slavery." 
" Yes," said I, " but they still retain the Cherok* 
" What ! " he inquired, " is tbere slavebolding among the 
Cherokees? " So here was an editor of a religious news- 
paper published in Philadelphia who did not know that 
the Cherokee mission wss still in connection with the 
American Board, and that slaveholders were in connec 
tion with the mission. A similar erroneous impression 
prevails widely among the Christian public. 

If you look at that map [pointing to a la'ge map 
2 



14 

behind the platform], you will see that the Cherokeea 
occupy the whole north of Indian Territory, and the 
Ohoctaws the whole soath. The territory of the Chero- 
keea is about as large as the State of Massachus 
These Indians are famous slaveholders. I have received 
direct information from a black man now in Kansas — 
who was formerly a slave in the South — who has I 
bought and sold at d iff rent times in and out of three 
different States of the Union — who was at last bought 
by a Cherckee owner, from whom he ran away and 
escaped into Kan°as. For slaves run out of the Chero- 
kee nation into Kansas, just as, nearer home, they run 
out of Delaware and Maryland into Pennsylvania. This 
man declares that he did not suffer in any State t 
sruel bondage as among the Cherokees. Why ? Be- 
cause the masters are Indians and have been savages. It 
is natural to suppose that oppression is more cruel unl r 
Indians than under whites. I have word also from an- 
other slave in Kansas, who goes by the name of " Chero- 
kee Bill " ; and he gives a similar testimony. 

I will mention another circumstance to show the cl 
acter of slavery among the Cherokee?. If a fogi 
escapes from Missouri into Kansas, and the owr^ r 
a slave-catcher after him, the hunter, if a successful 
bunt has yielded hira his prey, 6omeiim"s carries him back 
to his master, to be repaid by the proceeds of half the 
slave's value realized in cash at public auction, but very 
often, instead of carrying him back, he marches him 
across the Kansas line into the Cherokee nation, to Bell 
him captive to the Indiana, from whom often he ca; 
more money than a mere half price ! So that the b! 
hunters carry on a double knavery ; first, catching the 
slaves when they escape, and, then, when they are caught, 
taking them to more rigorous masters, who will pay a 
higher price. 

!^ueh are so-ne of the features of slave hunting and 
elaveholdiog as practised by the Cheerokets I 

I now undertake to review the historic action of the 
American Board on the subject of slavery, with a view 



to show its lamentable complicity with this terrible sys- 
tem as it exists amoDg these Indians. 

Mr. Beecher began his review, in detail, at 1845 ; I 
begin mine at 1841. At the meeting of that year, held 
in Philadelphia, a memorial was presented from seventeen 
m'nisters of New Hampshire, most of whom were hono- 
rary members of the Board, asking it to break what ap- 
peared to them " a studied silence on the subject of Ame- 
rican slavery." The memorialists said : 

" We do think that American slavery is such — and 
brought, in the providence of God, so distinctly into the 
notice of American Christians— that no man or body of 
men can innocently maintain a doubtful position in rela- 
tion to it." 

What did the Board reply ? They replied : 
" In regard to the particular object of the memorialists 
—that of obtaining a formal expression of the views and 
feelings of the Board respecting slavery — your Commit- 
tee do not think that such a measure is called for, or that it would 
be right or expedient ! " 

At the next meeting, which was in Norwich, Ot., in 
1842, the attention of the Board was called to the ques- 
tion, " whether any, or, if any, how many, of its missiona- 
ries were slaveholders." It then appeared that the Pru- 
dential Committee had, for six years, had a letter in 
their hands, written by one of their missionaries, stating 
the fact of his holding slaves. For six years ! Yes, sir ; 
and duriDg all this time bis letter was lying in the Mis- 
sionary House, suppressed by the Committee. Yet Mr, 
Beecher said (I believe, without his knowing the facts) 
that, from the beginning until now, the Board had acted 
up to its highest light and had kept pace with the pro- 
gress of the times on the subject of slavery 1 But the 
Board said of slavery, that very year : 

" We consider it as one of the obvious evils which exist 
in the community, the removal of which, though we 
regard it as an orject of fervent desire and prayer, does 
not full within our province as a Missionary Board. These 
are our settled- principles," 



16 

Bat the memorialists urged that the Board had taken 
occasion to condemn other evils, and why not slavery, the 
sam of evils ? To this the Board replied : 

" It is alleged by tbe memorialists that the Board has 
departed from these principles and his expressed opinions 
relative to other prevailing evils. Respecting intemper- 
ance, licentiousness, Indian oppression, and some other 
hindrances to the progress of Christianity, as they pre- 
vailed in the countries where the missions of the Board 
are established, and powerfully counteracted the labors 
of the missionaries, and in some instanses subjected them 
to great peril , the Board has stated the facts as they occurred, 
and in various forms, more or less explicit, has uttered the Ian- 
guage of condemnation. These evils, existing in tbe coun- 
tries where the missions are operating, and etanding 
directly in the way of the Board's accomplishing its 
object, were, of course, legitimate and proper subjects for its 
animadversion If it has at any time gone further than 
this, and expressed opinions relative to immoralities or 
evils of any kind, prevailing in this country, and not 
directly counteracting the labors of the missionaries, your Com- 
mittee regard such action as a departure from the great 
principles on which the Board was organiz-d, and by 
which they think its proceedings should always be 
governed." 

Now, what is the meaning of these words ? Sir, they 
mean that intemperance, licentiousness aud Indian oppres- 
sion are hindrances to the missions ; but that slavery is 
no hindrance 1 That is a Christian discrimination for 
you 1 Yet Mr. Beecher, in speaking of the Board aa it 
stood in 1845, said, " You must remember the general 
sentiment on temperance then — how lax it was." But 
even three years before 1845, in 1842, the Board was 
already leading public sentiment on this subject ; it had 
already expressed unequivocally its condemnation of in* 
temperance umong the Cherokees ; it had done this not- 
withstanding what ray friend called the "general laxity 
of public sentiment in respect to intemperance " ; but at 
the same time, it let slavery entirely alone. 

You perceive that it bore testimony against licentious- 



17 

ness. What is tbe most fruitful cause of licentiousness 
in a slaveholding country? Slavery ! And why ? Be- 
cause it breaks down all barriers to honor, because it 
despoils chastity, because it invades the sanctity of the 
family, because it destroys every personal right 1 Yet 
the Board, in testifying against these separate evils, said 
not a single word against that which was at that very time 
the fruitful mother of them all ! 

The report speaks of " Indian Oppression ! " Ab, ye3 ! 
how aear it came to saying the right word ! It saved 
itself only by making it plainly appear that " Indian 
oppression " meant oppression by Indians in the East, not 
by Indians in the West I 

The next meeting was at Worcester, in 1844. The 
memorials kept pouring in ! Yet, if tbe Board was really 
up with the spirit of the times, why was it troubled with 
such a host of memorials ? What did the memorialists 
ask ? They said : 

11 We ask the Board earnestly to entreat all the mis- 
sionaries and agents under its patronage to bear decided 
testimony against the pin of oppression, wherever and 
ia whatever form it exists? ; and most especially to 
declare, in the name of the Board, of the Churches repre- 
sented by it, and of Jesus Christ whom they preach, that 
American slavery is a sin against God, and that its exist- 
ence in a Christian land is in nowise chargeable to tbe 
Christian religion which they are commissioned to preach, 
bat is grossly at variance with all its holy doctrines and 
precepts. And we further pray that the Board would imme- 
diately take measures to ascertain to what extent slavery or oppres- 
sion exists in the Churches under its patronage, and especially 
among the Choctaws and other Indian tribes ; and take such 
action at this meeting as shall speedily remove the evil, or exone- 
rate them and their missionaries from all the responsibility and 
guilt of Us continuance or toleration." 

Now, my friend says we must remember the difference 

in public sentiment between that time and this. But this 

al in 1844 is all we ask in 1860 1 We ask no more 

now than those memorialists asked then! But so far 

from the Board keeping pace with the times on this sub- 



18 

ject, before the very Dext annual meeting the Rev. Amos 
A. Phelps wrote and left on record these words : 

" The position of the Board, from the beginning of the 
present movement in behalf of the slave, is that of resist- 
ance to the general progress, and on the side of slavery." 

It is too late, therefore, for Mr. Beecher to say in 1860 
that the Board kept pace with the progress of the age, 
when in 1844, an eye witness of the progress which the 
age was making declared that the Board was resisting 
that general progress, and on the side of slavery ! 

What was done by the Board in that year? They 
quoted their declaration of the preceding year, adding 
only these words : 

'* It is quite certain that, without a change of views, 
the Board can do nothing beyond this." 

A change of views ! That is what I charge — that they 
needed a change of views ! They bad not yet been con- 
verted to anti-slavery Eentiment. In genuine conversion 
there are two thing?, namely, a change of views and a 
chaDge of conduct. The Board had not then come even 
to a change of views! 

Then followed the meeting in 1845, with which Mr. 
Beecher began his speech. So lcng ago as that. year, be 
said, the Board gave utterance to anti-slavery principles. 
He quoted from the annual report an allusion to Dr. 
Chalmers's admission that slaveboldiog was not necessarily 
sinful. The words of the quotation were scarcely out of 
Lis mouth before a tote, written in lead-pencil, was passed 
to me in my seat by a stranger in the audience. It was 
in these words : 

" The opinion of Dr. Chalmers end others of the Scotch 
Free Church wsp delivered at a time when a deputation 
had visited the United Statea to collect lunds for the sup- 
port of the Fice Cburcb. The people of Scotland (the 
Dissenters) held public meetings, at v*hich it was urged 
that the Free Church should ' cast back to America the 
impious gift. 1 " 

More than that, when I went to my office next morning, 
2* 



1$ 

I found on my desk a note from another gentleman to 
whom Mr. Beecher referred by name, in reading his quo- 
tation from Dr. Chalmers ; I mean Mr. M'Kay,a Scotch- 
man and a member of Plymouth Church. I will read 
part of it : 

" I ask you to vindicate 'Auld Scotia ' for her own take, 
and for mine. In the year 1843, the ' Disruption' gave 
birth to the Free Church of Scotland. They were in want 
of money, and sent a deputation from Scotland to these 
United States for the purpose of soliciting their sympathy 
and assistance. Tbey went to the Southern States, 
received the hospitality and contributions of slaveholders 
and slaveholding Churches, and this in spite of a protest 
made to them on their arrival at New York. They went 
back to Scotland with a good deal of money — and a great 
deal of disgrace (laughter) ; and from the Tweed to Juhn 
O'Groat's the Free Church became a hissing and a bye- 
word, so much so that you might have seen placardtd, 
around the streets of Edinburgh, 4 Send back the money 
—Send back the money.' " 

Mr. Beecher— Did they send it back? (Laughter.) 
Mr. Tilton — I do not know ; but they ought to have 

sent it back (renewed laughter and applause). So much 

for Dr. Chalmers ! 
New, this report of 1845 cites some facts, among which 

I select two. It says : 

" In Christian instruction and care, both of their chil- 
dren and tbeir slaves, the missionaries represent these 
Indian church-members as being generally and often greatly 
deficient '." 

Also, 

"Among the Cherokees and Choctaws the church-mem- 
bers are but poorly qualified to give religious instruction ; 
and often the slaveE — owing to their better knowledge of 
the English language, and consequently their easier inter- 
course with the mbsionftiies and oi hers— are more intelligent 
on religious subjects than their masters." 

ad yet Mr. Beecher thinks that the Report of 1845 
expresses a true eentiment on the subject of slavery. 



What sentiment does it express ? Not that an ignorant 
slave shall be held by a kind-hearted master and trained 
and educated, until he shall at last be lifted up into the 
light and liberty of the sons of God ; but that an intelli- 
gent slave, well informed on religioa3 subjects, having the 
grace of God in his heart, shall be held in bondage by an 
ignorant man, who wrongly treats not only his own slaves, 
but bis own children 1 

I need not a3k him to answer whether that is a " true 
sentiment on the subject of slavery " ! 

In view of these facts, laid before the Board, what was 
clone? Nothing ! Mark you, the Board knew that igno- 
rant men, unabie to take care of their own children, were 
trying to take care of slaves who knew more than their 
masters ; and yet the Board, knowing full well, from the 
testimony of their own Secretary, that this was the char- 
acter of these slaveholders, approved their admission to 
the Mission Churches ! Is it possible, then, that Mr. 
Beecher can believe " the Board was up to the progress of 
the times on the subject of slavery " ? Is it possible that 
he can sav, " I am not ashamed to stand where they 
stood " ? 

Ah, sir, what must have been the feelings of those 
intelligent slaves whom this report so highly compliments ? 
— those slaves who knew more than their masters — tbo?e 
es so weil informed on religious subjects — those slaves 
whose minds God had enlightened and whose hearts he 
hud touched with his iOve? — I a*k, sir, what must have 
been their emotions when this report from the Board 
reached their hovels and cabins? I think I can almost 
the figure of Christ standing once again, as of old, 
among his poor on earth, and with that divine voice that 
spake as never man spake, saying, with sad reproach, to 
that Missionary Board, " Inasmuch as ye did it not unto 
the least of these, ye did it not unto me.' " 

Now, sir, I am willing to admit that there are a great 
many things in this report that are sound, frank and anti- 
slavery ; but what was the action which followed the 
'■vord-3? The action! Was it up to the progress of the 



21 

age? No, sir! For almo?t at that very moment— after 
this message had been sent by the American Board to 
those slaves — the new Society, the American Missionary 
Association, sprang into existence as a living protest 
against the Board's complicity with slavery. It was formed 
because the Board had proved itself behind the progress 
of the times. The American Missionary Association 
arose in testimony against that backwardness ; and to- 
day, every one of its missionaries and agents, every one of 
its members aud contributors, makes a virtual protest 
against the Board's complicity with slavery. Every one 
of its distant mission stations— in the West Indies, in 
Africa, in the Sandwich Islands, among the Copts of 
Egypt, and nearer home, in Canada, among the Obijue 
and Ottawa Indians— makes a perpetual protest against 
that Board 1 Yes, sir, even among the Indians. For the 
Indians of one tribe, receiving their religious teachings 
from the Missionary Association, rise up in protest against 
the slavery practised by another tribe who are sanctioned 
in their oppression by ihe American Board 1 

Mr. Beecher— I would like to ask whether Mr. TiHon 
would prefer that any misstatement of fact he makes 
respecting my speech should be met at the time, or whe- 
ther I should reserve the correction until he finishes his 
speech. 

Mr. Tilton— I would consult your own preference, 
not mine, in regard to that. 

Mr. Beecher— I did not undertake to say that the 
Board, in 1841, 2, 3, 5, nor 1848, were up to the standard 
of the present time, nor up to the standard of some of the 
most enlightened men of those times. I merely said, com- 
prehensively, that, looking at the Board, in its action from 
1845 up to this day, it bad been influenced by the times 
and bad come up to their standard. 

Mr. Tilton— Any remarks which my friend may make, 
I shall receive in the spirit of kindness and courtesy. 

1 now come to the meeting of 1848, held at Boston— 
the year in which Mr. Treat made his famous report. It 
will be remembered that my friend compared Mr. Treat's 



ss 

report to the Epistles to the Corinthians ! Now, let us 
see what it is that is so much like the Epistles to the 
Corinthians (laughter). In respect to the number of 
slaves, Mr. Treat writes : 

"Some say that among the Cherokees there are not 
more than seven hundred J while others think there are 
as many as fifteen hundred. The latter is the estimate of 
the Principal Cbief, and it is most likely to be correct. 
At any rate we must suppose the proportion of slaves to 
Cberokees to be nearly, if not quite, one to ten. It is 
hardly possible that persons held in bondage by euch a 
people should be in as favorable circumstances as those 
who have fallen into the hands of enlightened and bumane 
masters in the States; especially if those masters are 
under the influence of Christian principle, and are endea- 
voring to treat their slaves according to the injunctions of 
the gospel." 

Now, these extracts show that these slaves were not in 
so happy a coDditioD as others in other places, who had 
access to the New Testament. This deprivation of the 
Scriptures, however, was soon to be rtmedied in part ; 
for as soon as Mr. Treat could send them his letter, they 
would have, if not the whole Scriptures, at least the 
Epistles to the Corinthians (laughter). 1 will read some 
more verses from these Epistles : 

" Tbe predominant influence in both nations is mainly 
in the hands of slaveholders. Tbe intelligence and enter- 
prise which enable them s to acqaire this species of pro- 
perty also qualify them for au active and successful par- 
ticipation iu public affairs. Aud many belonging to this 
class would certainly resist, to the utmost, any proposal 
tending to the abolition of slavery." 

Give good heed, for I am quoting from Mr. Beecher'a 
Scriptures (laughter). 

" It does not seem to have been the aim of the brethren 
to exert any direct iisflu nee, ehber by their public or their 
private teachings, upon tbe system of Blavery. And they 
discovered, as they supposed, a sufficient warrant for this 
course in the Ntw Tegument" 

What? In the Epidtles to the Corinthians? Yesl 



For, if not in the old Epistles of St. Paul, at least in tba 
new Epistle of St. Treat 1 (Laughter.) 

Mr. Beecher— I think you have extracted from two 
documents ; the first a letter, the second a report. My 
remark in refereuce to ths uninspired book of Corin- 
thians (laughter) was to the letter and not the report. 
Mr. Tilton — Well, sir, itltoakes very little dififeier 
both are from Mr. Treat. 

What, now, are the view3 of the missionaries them- 
selves? The missionaries amoni? the Oherokees have 
eaid, in a document signed by all their number : 

" In regard to the question of rejecting any person from 
the Church simply because he is a slaveholder, we cannot 
for a moment, hesitate. For we regard it as certain that 
the Apostles, who are our patterns, did receivt slaveh' Iders to the 
communion of the Church; and we have not yet been able 
to perceive any such difference between the'r circum- 
stances and ours as to justify us in departing from their 
practice in this respect." 

Thus they defend slaveholding from the Bible ! They 
say, moreover : 

" Nor can we even make it a test of piety, or a condi- 
tion of. admission to the privileges of the Cbureb, that a 
candidate should express a determination not to live and die a 
slaveholder.'' 1 

That is to say, they would not only receive slaveholders, 
but would not require them to give a pledge that they 
would not live and die slaveholders. Still further : 

" You asked (say the missionaries), among other things, 
whether we wouid undertake to discipline a church mem- 
ber for buying or selling slaves as merchandise, for g »in." 
Now, the letter of the missionaries goes on to give a 
large number of instances. I will recite one : 

"Between the two extremes of purchasing for t^e 
slave's sake, and buying and selling with a total disre- 
gard of the interest of the slave, there are many c:'ses of 
mixed motive, whtre the buyer or seller might allow (hat he had 
regard to his own interest; but yet, as he makes the condition of 
the slave no worse but perhaps much better, by the transfer, 
neither he nor most of hit brethren in the Church could be ltd to 
see that he had been guilty of any violation of the law ofloveP 



24 

Oh, yes ! That is the argument that geeks to promote 
the revival of the slave trade ! To bring the benighted 
African to this country to receive the benefits of Christian 
institutions ! 

" Occasional exchanges of masters," the y add, " are so 
inseparable from the existence of slavery that the Churches 
could not consistently receipt slaveholders to their com- 
munion at all, and at the same time forbid ail each ex- 
changes. W« regard it, therefore, as impossible to exercise 
discipline for the buying or selling of slaves, except in flagrant 
cases of manifest disregard to the welfare of the siave. r 

Is this the commentary on the Epistles to the Corin- 
thians? Why, sir, print that and send it to Italy ; let it 
find its way into Florence, where Mrs. Stowe is now re- 
siding ; say that Henry Ward Beecher's name is at the 
bottom of it as endorsement ; what would Mrs. Stowe 
say ? She would exclaim, with a tfusb, " It is a forgery of 
his name ! " Nay, sir, the pastor of this C butch would him- 
self blush to see his name signed to any such sentiment as 
that ! Buying and selling slaves ! What is that but the 
Slave Trade ? And what is the Slave Trade ? Ah, sir, 
on the high seas, it is pronounced piracy, but — wonderful 
anomaly ! — on land it is pronounced Christianity ! Y» j t 
what is the difference between the horrors of the middle 
passage and the horrors of the overland passage ? What 
is the difference between the sufferings of the lower deck 
and the terrors of the chain gang ? None at all, sir ! 
I tell you there is just as much deep despair and hopeless 
horror in the slave jail as there ever was in the slave 
ship ! And yet these missionaries have set their hand 
and seal to this paper, which declares that they cannot 
forbid, even in their own Churches, the buying and selling 
of men and women ! In other words, under the name of 
carrying on missionary operations, they are carrying on 
the slave trade ! They say further : 

" In regard to the separation of parents and children, 
we must firHt remark that it is one of those thicga which 
are not forbidden i>y any express in junction of Scripture." 
* * * " Very young children, we believe, are seldom sepa- 



25 

rated from their mothers. In our Churches, we do not re- 
member to have known an instance. In regard to older 
children, many cases may arise where neither the condition of the 
parent nor that of the child will be rendered wont, bat that of ons 
of them may be greatly improved by the proposed separation ; and 
where it cannot be readily %hown to be any more a viola- 
tion of the larc of love than any other transfer of a slave 
from one master to another. It is impossible, in our circum 
stances, to make it a general rule that the separation of parents 
and children, by sale or purchase, shall be regarded as a discipli- 
nable offence." 

These are the views of the missionaries ! Now, wno 
wrote this statement of principles ? It was written by 
the Rev. Mr. Worcester, whose name signs it. Yet, do 
you not remember how Mr. Beecher eulogized this same 
Rev. Mr. Worcester, the other night ? You have not 
yvit forgotten how he described him with glowing words 
as & man in whose veins flowed New England blood, upon 
who=<3 arms had hung prisoners' chains, and who once 
bad teen thrown into a dungeon for Christ's sake ! My 
friend asked, " Could such a man, with such New Eng- 
land blood, be anything else than an anti-slavery man ? " 
But, air, that was" the very man whose hand wrote these 
lines ! Archbishop Ctanmer, in a moment of weakness 
recanted his Protestant faith ; afterwards, when his con- 
science reproached him, he recanted his recantation ; 
was soon after brought to suffer at the stake. While the 
fires of martyrdom were kindling about him, he stretched 
out his right hand into the flames, and there held it until it 
was burned off, and fell to ashes, crying out the while, 
" Unworthy band ! unworthy hand ! " Sir, if I had writ- 
ten only the single sentence that I have read from this 
statement, so quietly and sacredly sanctioning the tearing 
away of children from tbeir parents, whenever I looked 
upon the hand that bad held the pen, I would have cried 
out, " Unworthy hand ! unworthy band ! " 

And yet my friend stood on these boards on Monday 
night to picture to us, in complimentary strain, the cur- 
rent of New England blood that ftowed in this mau's 
veins, and to say, pointing with hia emphatic finger, 
3 



26 

11 Here was an anti-slavery man ! " Sir [turning to Mr. 
Beecher], I know too well your quick instinct for freedom 
ever to believe that you were cognizant of these facts 
when you uttered that eulogy ! 

But, besides, in regard to the impression which my 
friend produced, that Mr. Worcester was thrown into 
prison because of his allegiance to the anti-slavery cause, 
this is an eotire mistake. The facts were simply these : 
The Cherokee mission was at that time in the State of 
Georgia. The Legislature of Georgia tried to crowd out 
the Indians from the State in order to seize their lands. 
Mr. Worcester, who was at that early day a missionary, 
defended the Indians. For that reasoD, and for that 
reason alone, he was put in jail- There was not a shadow 
of anti-slavery principle involved in the matter. 

Now, what did the Board do after ail these statements 
had been received from the missionaries, at that (apous 
meeting of 1848 ? Whv, sir, Dr. Blanchard, who has 
since been President of Knox College, offered the iollow- 
iug resolution : 

" Reeolved, That, this Board distinctly admits and 
BStms the principle that slaveholdiug is a practice which 
is not to be allowed in the Corisiian Churcb." 

How was this resolution received ? Look at the 
annual report of 1848 ! Here is the neat and pretty 
record. The report remarks : 

"Dr. Blanchard having been requested- to withdraw 
theise resolutions, consented to do so ; and the Board per- 
mitted them to be inserted in the minutes of tbe meeting." 

Now, would not any one suppose, on reading these 
minutes, that Dr. Blanchard, after having offered his re- 
solution, finally came to a sober eeco^d thought, and 
thought it better to withdraw it? Certainly! But 
turn back to the newspaper files of that day and see what 
was the sentiment of that meeting. The moment it be- 
came apparent that tke Board was going to sweep away 
the resolution, without leaving even so much as a record 
of it on the minutes, the Rev. Edward Beecher rose to 
bis feet and protested, saying, " Gentlemen, you must not 
do that ! " Dr. Lyman Beecher followed his son, protest- 



27 

ing, with all the eloquence of his palmiest days, " BrethreD, 
you must not do that ! " But the resolution could not 
be passed, and the only way to get it on the records 
at all, in a parliamentary manner, was for Dr. Blan- 
chard to withdraw it. So it was withdrawn, not will- 
ingly, but necessarily. But the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher says that, comprehensively, he has agreed to 
sympathize with the Board from the beginning ! Will 
he sympathize with that against which both bis brother 
and his father protested? His brother Edward was then, 
as he is now, an older man than he, by some years ; and 
perhaps, therefore, their disparity of views may be put 
down to the " Conflict of Ages" (loud laughter). 

Skipping now the long interval of seven years of silence, 
we come to the visit of Secretary Wood to the Cboctaws 
and Cherokees, in 1855. We come to the Good water 
document. Mr. Beecher says that the case must stand or 
fall with the Good water document. That paper begins 
as follows : 

" Slavery, as a system, and in its own proper nature, is 
what it is described to be in the General Assembly's Act 
of 1818, and the Report of the American Board adopted 
at Brooklyn in 1845." 

I have already read a sufficient part of the report of 
1845 to show that it meant nothing. Now, what is the 
"General Assembly's Act of 1818"? 

Here let me ask, Has anybody in this wide land ever 
been more severe against the Colonization Society than 
the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher? Every one who is 
familiar with his speeches will say " No." You know that 
that Society says to the black man who wants liberty : 
"You can get it only at the price of expatriation and 
exile." And yet, by accepting this report of the General 
Assembly of 1818, the missionaries distinctly declare 
their adhesion to the principles of the Colonization So- 
ciety, and express their desire to carry on its work of 
expatriation ! 

Still further. Does the testimony of 1818 make the 
buying and selling of slaves a disciplinable offence ? No, 



28 

only so far as " selling slaves to those who will either 
themselves deprive these unhappy people of the blessings 
of the gospel, or who will transport them to places where 
the gospel is not proclaimed." And yet this document 
is what Mr. Beecher says he is willing to stand or fall by 1 

I admit that there are many strong utterances in the 
General Assembly's Act of 1818 ; but tell me why this 
Presbyterian document was sent for signature to a Con- 
gregational mission ? When the Prudential Committee 
wanted the missionaries to utter a testimony against 
slavery, why did they not ask the missionaries to write 
their testimony with fresh ink and on fresh paper? Why 
did the Prudential Committee dig up,out of the dust a 
dingy parchment well-nigh fifty years old? The reason 
is plain! From the very year of the signing of that 
document down through all the long lapse of time until 
to-day, that act has been a dead letter. I speak the truth ! 
No man can gainsay it ! For, what kind of testimony is 
that, against slavery, under which, as I have already read, 
there has grown up a Presbyterian Church which at this 
moment is holding in bonds thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of human beings ! Under the shadow of that Act 
of 1818, there has been gathered together, in the Pres- 
byterian Church, so great a multitude of slaves, owned 
by its members and its ministers, that if they were mar- 
shalled into one host, tby would make an Emperor's 
grand army 1 I gave you, from a table of statistics, the 
exact number — 77,000 ! Listen to a story which the 
Rev. Mr. Fee, of Kentucky, tells : 

" I know the case of a minister in this same Church, 
and in our State, who, that he might take another man's 
wife from him (which woman he claimed as his slave, and 
said to be so white that she was freckled), hastened from 
boose to hou c e on Sabbath morning to hire the pons of 
Presbyterian elders to go forthwith and bunt his slave 
woman ; and being reproved by a Methodist sister for 
temptiDg the young men to go and desecrate the Sabbath, 
he replied, ' Madam, it is the preacher's nigger.' And 
yet, that man was and is a preacher in good and regular 
standing in that body." 

This is the kind of anti-slavery sentiment and practice 



that has grown up in the great Presbyterian Church, 
Old School and New, under the shadow of the General 
Assembly's Act of 1818, by which my friend declares he 
will either stand or fall ! 

What is the next thing in this Good water platform ? 

" Privation of liberty in holding slaves is, therefore, 
not to be ranked with things indifferent, but with those 
which, if not made right by special justificatory circum- 
stances and the intention ot the doer, are morally wrong." 

Now, let me ask, what is it, in any case, that makes 
slaveholding justifiable ? I call to your mind the Golden 
Rule — « Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, 
do ye even so to'tbem." Now, who is to be the judge? 
Who is to decide what are justifiable and what are un- 
justifiable circumstances ? Is it the missionary ? Is it 
the Church ? Is it the slaveholder ? No ! I declare, in 
the name of the divine Author of the Golden Rule, that 
neither of these is to be the judge ! Who then ? Sir, I 
hold that you must go first and go only to the slave f 
Ask him if he be justifiably held in his chains ! If he says 
" Yea ! " then your bondage may be innocent ; but if he 
says <k Nay," then, though master, missionary, church and 
all were to cry out, " He is rightfully enslaved," I declare, 
in the name of the God of justice, that no plea that goes 
by the name of a justifying circumstance will, for a 
moment, prevail before the great bar of Him whose judg- 
ment is righteous and just I God will accept repentance 
of the wrong, but not a vindication of it ! And if a 
slave, held in slavery by a man who is a member of 
Christ's Church, declares that he is deprived of his liberty 
without his consent, then, sir, the Great Teacher of 
the Golden Rule, and all the great host of God's elect 
that look down from heaven to earth, protest against the 
bondage, and pronounce it sin ! Ah I I recall those 
searching words of Christ—" If tbou bring thy gift to 
the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
aught against thee, leave there thy gift upon the altar, 
and go thy way ; first be reconciled to thy brother and 
then come and offer tby gift " ! N ow, when a slaveholder 
comes to the communion-table with his slave by his side, 



30 

let him. before he aits down to eat and drink the body and 
blood of Christ, turn round, aod, looking into the face ot 
that dusky man, and remembering the scripture, ask 
himself, " Has my brother aught against me ? " and if 
there, under the arches of Christ's Church — if there, in 
the presence of Christ's majesty — the bondman should 
say that he is wi-linply held in bis bonds, and has 
naught against his oppressor, that may be a justifiable 
circumstance. But I declare, by the authority of the 
Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that there is no other 
justifiable circumstance under the sun! If the slave 
give3 his own consent, I interpose no objection ; but if 
the slave be unwillingly bound, I ask the Church to 
break the chain ! 

Mr. Beecher left the impression upon hia audience that 
the laws of the Cherokee nation forbid or prevent emanci- 
pation. Now, I have searched to find some such law. 
I have found none. On the contrary, I have found 
quite a different law. Tne legislation of the Cherokees, 
so far as it affects free negroes and slaves, appears 
to be milder than that of most of the States. The 
only restriction i3 this : if a slave be emancipated, 
his master shall be responsible for what he does after 
his emancipation, as before; that is, if he robs a hen- 
roost or an orchard, his former master shall pay the 
damages. That is all. There is no prohibition in the 
way of emancipation. Mr. Beecher cannot say that the 
slaves in the Cherokee Churches are held in slavery 
because the strong arm of the law is over them. The 
arm of the law is p )werless to prevent their emancipation. 
The masters are at liberty to emancipate their slaves, if 
they will, but they will not! That is the reason why I 
arraigu the Cherokee Mission and the Board that sustains 
it! 

I now c< me to a passige in the Good water platform 
which my f iend omitted to read. Sometiires swift 
skaters, on coming suddenly to an air-hole in the ice, 
inductively, and without stopping to look, leap over it at 
a bjund ! So my friend, in the rapidity of his reading, 
on finding himself coming into a dangerous place, half 



31 

unconsciously leaped over a significant sentence in the 
Good-water Platform. SpeakiDg of a missionary's duties, 
the platform says : 

" As a missionary. Tie has nothing to do with political ques- 
tions and agitations /" 

Now, 1 do not say that my friend omitted these words 
intentionally ; I believed at the time, and believe now, 
that he did not notice what he was omitting ; but you 
remember, when I called his attention to the slighted sen- 
tence, and asked him to read it with the rest, he turned 
back and read it, and then turned around and exclaimed 
rather humorously, " Make the most of it 2 " Yes, sir, I 
will make the most of it ; I hope to make a go' d deal 
of it (laughter). I want to know if it has not been 
the testimony of this Church, and of its minister, from 
the beginning until now, that the Church of Christ, and 
its ministers, must have something to do with " political 
questions and agitations"? Nay, sir, I can once mure 
quote Beecber against Beecher 1 For only last evening 
he delivered a lecture in New York on " Politics and 
Religion," in which, as if on purpose to throw out a quiet 
commentary on his speech of the night before, he uttered 
these words, wbL'b I find in The Tribune's report : 

" Wherever you had a man wtaosa politics and religion 
are kept, separate, you always fiad th-it bis politics are the 
cream, and his religion the skim milk." To which the 
reporter's account then adds, " great applause ! " (Laugh- 
ter.) 

Now, sir, this is called the Good water platform ; let us 
call it rather the good milk and water platform ! (Loud 
laughter.) 

But some of the missionaries them elves have repudi- 
ated these very Good water declarations. I quote a letter 
from the Choctaw missionaries, printed in 'Ike New York 
Observer of Dec. 2d, 1858. 1 will merely state that as 
soon as the missionaries bad signed and sealed ibis docu- 
ment, the Board at Utica said, " We have got the mis- 
sionaries to say sometbiug " ; the anti-slavery men said, 
" We have something to be satisfied with " ; but the very 
moment the missionaries heard of what the Board said, 



32 

they repudiated what they themselves said. They wrote 
in a letter : 

" The construction put upon the Goodwater platform, 
by the Board at Utica, makes it impossible for us to 
regard that as an expression of our principles." 

So much, therefore, for the Goodwater platform ! 

Now, last of all in this documentary chain, I come to 
the last annual report ; that of 1859. Mr. Treat, hav- 
ing done with the Epistles to the Corinthians, now under- 
takes to write an Epistle to the Choctaws. He says : 

" It is proper that we should review, in the fewest pos- 
sible words, the history of a question which has received 
so much attention within the last few year?. You remark 
that your policy had ' the full approbation of the Secretaries 
and the Prudential Committee for more than five-and twenty 
years, and was finally approved with perfect unanimity by the 
Board at Brooklyn/ For much of the time since the meeting at 
Brooklyn, we have supposed that there was no material difference 
'.nyour mission and ourselves. In the year 1848, indeed, 
there seemed to be some divergency ; but in the following year you 
declared your asient to the letter of the Cherokee mission, dated 
March 21, 1848, ' as expressing in a clear and condensed man- 
ner ' your ' main views and principles ' ; and verbal statements, 
subsequently made by some of your number, gave the Committee 
very great satisfaction ." , 

What, sir, is the implication of this paragraph ? What 
was it that gave the Committee such " very great sate- 
faction ?1 ? It was in looking back, in 1859, to the " main 
views and principles " of 1848. What were these ? Why, 
they were the declarations drawn up by the Rev. Mr. 
ircester, which I have already read ; showing that the 
missionaries had found a way to receive slaveholders into 
the Church, and to sanction it from the Bible ; that they 
had found a way of admitting them to Christ's commu- 
nion without exacting a pledge that they " would not live 
and die slaveholders"; that they had found a way of 
giving them the right hand of fellowship in the Church 
and still allowing them to buy and sell their fellow-men, 
as property, under the pleasant and easy phrase of " occa- 
sional exchanges of masters " ; that they had found a way 
of advancing CbrL-t's kingdom on the earth by the sepa- 
ration of little children from their parents, and sending 



them to the auction-block to be sold ! These, sir, these 
were the " main view8 and principles " which gave the 
Committee such " very great satisfaction " ! 

Yet here is where rfty friend says he stands, and where 
he is not ashamed to stand ! At this point be takes leave 
of the argument, and says to this Missionary Board, " God 
speed, venerable Board!" Here he remembers, and 
recounts with bewitching humor, how, in his early day?-, 
he drove a fast horse with a missionary, and got over, in 
half an hour, a road which it took his father an hour and 
a-balf to travel (laughter). 

Now, what was the action of the Board at its last 
meeting? The history of forty-three years was well 
known. The fact of slaveholding in the Mission Churches 
was well known. The uninterrupted agitation since 1841 
was well known. The steadfast resistance of the Board 
to the cause of freedom was well known. All this was 
known — known for years, and known, moreover, as stig- 
matized by thousands of Christian men as a shame and a 
reproach. But now came another annual meeting j now 
came another chance of remedying the past ; now came 
a full and free opportunity to speak a word which should 
at last atone for the silence of forty years ! But what 
was done at this last meeting, held in Philadelphia ? A 
resolution was offered declaring that slaveholding should 
be regarded aa prima facie evidence that the slaveholder 
was unfit for church membership. It was drawn by Dr. 
Cheever, in the following words : 

"That, in the opinion of the Board, the holding of 
slaves be pronounced an immorality, inconsistent with 
membership in any Christian Church ; and that it ought 
to be required tbat these Missionary Churches should 
immediately put away from themselves this sin, and 
should cease to sanction it even in appearance." 

What is the meaning of that resolution ? It means that 
when a man, holding a yoke on the neck of a slave, 
comes and asks admission to the Church, the fact should 
be regarded, at first blush, as a strong evidence against 
him, and that he should be required to prove himself clear 
of guilt before he could be received. Was that not fair? 



34 

Nay, sir, was that not moderate? If the Board bad 
been at that time, as Mr. Beecber claimed it to be, an 
anti slavery body, would not an anti slavery body have 
passed that resolution? Well, sir^what was the fate of 
the resclution? It was swept clear of the house by a 
unanimous vote to lay it upon the table ! 

Nor was this all. A respectful and temperate memo- 
rial against the revival of the slave trade was similarly 
cleared from the docket — crowded over into another year, 
in order to be pushed to a safe dis f ance fr^ra the critical 
time when it was most needed ! Thi3 is the Board's last 
record on the subject of slavery — a refusal to utter a word 
of condemnation against a traffic which consists in the 
theft of human beings ! 

In view, therefore, of these evidences — and these are 
but a small part of what might have been given — I openly 
declare that the American Board is in palpable compli- 
city with American slavery. I have quoted to you their 
own reports. I have made no statements of fact of which 
I have not furnished documentary proof. Have I not, in 
view of these proofs, shown that my friend uttered a mis- 
taken judgment when he declared that the record of the 
Board, on the subject of slavery, was " clean, clear and 
pure ? " 

But, sir, shut the books and records ! I have no taste 
for this kind of reasoning ; I do net like mere technical 
argument ; I never was born to be a lawyer. What are 
the great facts that have been for forty years staring the 
wh^le world in the face ? 

This mission to the Cherokees was founded in 1817 ; 
it is now more than two-score years old ; the missionaries 
have been at their work until they have grown gray ; 
they have moulded the mission with their own hands ; 
they have made it a moral power against all the sins of 
the Indians, except their greatest ein ; they have set on 
foot among that semi barbarous people a'l the reforms of 
Christianity, except the single one that was most needed ; 
tbey have made Christian quarrel with every wrong, but 
the greatest wrong ; they have borne testimony against 
every villany, but the sum of all villanies ! To-day, there 



35 



is drunkenness among those Indians, and the missionaries 
testify against that; th:re is gambling, and they testify 
against that ; there is theft, and they testify against that ; 
there is slavery, and tbey shut their mouths ! 

The missionaries have to a great degree shaped the 
civilization of the Cberokees ; yet in reclaiming these 
savages from one barbarism, tbey have sanctioned them 
in another ; they have converted tbem from a heathenism 
of ignorance to teach tbem a heathenism of oppression. 
The Jndian3, growing up under the influence of the mis- 
sion stations, have been taught to believe that they can 
hold their slaves inside the Church as they held them out- 
side. The teachings of the missionaries, and the action 
of the Board, have failed to make the impression upon 
those haughty half-breeds that to hold, and buy, and sell 
their fellow-creatures as property is incompatible with the 
Christian religion ! 

You will recollect that, years ago, this Missionary 
Board arose, in the providence of. God, to such wide in- 
fluence anil power in this land that its decisions went forth 
almost like the imperial decrees of the first Napoleon from • 
Paris ! If the Board bad chosen to act against slavery, 
it would have set in motion one of the greatest engines in 
the Church ! It would have been like a battering-ram 
against the bulwark of oppression. I have already 
quoted the words of Albert Barnes, that slavery could 
not exist a day against the power of the Church. The 
American Board could have spoken the word and done 
the work ; it wielded the power of well-nigh half the 
American Church ; but it chose rather to allow the great 
opportunity of the age to go by ; it shut its mouth and 
was dumb ! 

Mr. Treat made a very significant remark in 1848, 
He said, speaking of the Board's efforts among these 
Indians : 

" It is very clear that the influence of the missions is 
neutralized to seme txteiit by the (zistettce of slavery." 

To this statement of Mr. Treat, I add a commentary 
of facts. In the Cherokee mission, 



36 



In 1836 there were 260 members. 
» 1848 " 236 " 

"1855 " 200 " 



You perceive the gradual decrease. But why should 
there be a decrease? Did not Mr. Beecher say that 
" usually there are more converts in Churches among the 
heathen than in Churches at home"? What, the. 
the cause of the reversal of the general rule, among the 
Cherokees ? Mr. Treat fatally gives the answer himself 
— "Slavery neutralizes the missions "/ 

That nobie man and missionary, David T. Stoddard, 
who spent his life in the East, said : 

" We do not dare to let our converts know that slavery exists in 
America; for how could we reconcile it with our professions as a 
Christian nation ? " 

But Mr. Beecher says that in looking at the past his- 
tory of the Board, he finds evidence that it has been | 
dually growing better and better. Does he remem.vr 
how, year after year, Nehemiah Adams, the man who 
sees only the " South-side view," has been invariably 
reelected a member of the Prudential Committee ? Mr. 
Beecher, in his last evening's lecture, let fly at this same 
Dr. Adams an arrow that might well nign have Btcrog 
him to death. Does Mr. Beecher think that Nehemiah 
Adams is wrong everywhere else, but right in the Pru- 
dential Committee? Does he not know that this annual 
reelection is made the occasion of an annual boasti:. 
a triumph over what is called the fanatical New England 
sentiment ? But Mr. Beecher says the Board is improv- 
ing. Well, improving how ? I heard, the other day, a 
capital story of Mr. Littell, the publisher of the L, 
Age. He was afflicted with a sore leg ; he called a phy- 
sician from a distance ; the leg was treated as a serious 
case ; the recovery was very slow ; at last the physician 
went away, leaving directions behind him, and telling his 
patient to report by letter ; at the end of two or three 
months, the doctor received a letter somewhat as follows : 
" Dear Sir : My leg is improving ; if I look at it day by 
day, I do not see any advance ; if I compare it week by 
week, I notice only very little ; if I look back month by 
month, I eee only a little more ; but three months ahead 



37 

perhaps I shall be able to see considerable improvement. 
On the whole, my leg may eventually get well, but not in 
my day " (great laughter). Now, sir, I am willing to 
admit that the American Board may be improving little 
by little, year by year ; nay, sir, comparing long inter- 
vals, it may be improving considerably ; still, I do not 
think it will be well in our day (laughter). What does 
it need ? It needs the surgeon's knife, and that is what I 
ask this Church to give it ! 

Now, I beg you to bear in mind one thing. In the 
report of 1848 it is declared that 

" The Board is directly responsible for the teachings of the 
missionaries." 

It is declared also that 

" When evils exist in the Mission Churches, the Prudential 
Committee may and must inquire whether the missionaries are 
performing their duty." 

Now, we have been told, in this debate, that the Board, 
not being an ecclesiastical body, can have no ecclesiastical 
power. Itie Churches under its patronage, it is said, are 
independent of its control. The adroit excuse is offered, 
that the Prudential Committee at Boston have no autho- 
rity over the mission at Goodwater. No, sir, this excuse 
is not valid. We do not ask the Committee to exercise 
ecclesiastical power over the missionaries. We wish them 
to say only this : " To our brethren over the prairies, 
greeting : we have no control over you or your Churches, 
and we wish none ; but we are put in trust with and have 
control over the funds with which you are supported ; 
now, we say to you frankly, if you receive slaveholders 
into your Churches, and so put us in complicity with 
slavery, we will give you no more money ! " That would 
end the controversy in short order ! 

Suppose it were reported at the Missionary House in 
Pemberton Square that the missionaries among the 
Cherokees were receiving into their Churches Unitarians, 
or Universalists, or Koman Catholics ; what would the 
Prudential Committee do ? I tell you that the Pope of 
Rome never thundered a bull of excommunication more 
4 



38 

suddenly at renegade priest or Protestant heretic than 
the American Board would send forth a letter of excom- 
munication of those backsliding missionaries ! When 
any sin but the national sin comes to light, Pemberton 
Square gathers blackness and thunders forth its voice ! 
Let the cry of adultery be raised against an unfortunate 
Secretary, and the Prudential Committee rise up in their 
majesty and might, and, before the evidence is rendered, 
before the facts are known, on the first blush of suspicion, 
they say, " Gut him off! cut him off! " Thus they cut 
off Dr. Pomroy before there was the slightest evidence of 
his guilt ; sentencing him on a day's suspicion ; while 
there, in their Cherokee Churches, they had abundant 
evidence that, not for a day, but for forty years, there has 
been sanctioned and sustained a system which is not only 
the mother of adultery, but of every other sin ; and yet 
the Prudential Committee, with marvellous consistency, 
cut loose their Secretary, but hold fast their slaveholders ! 
I have heard of a woman who wa3 asked what she thought 
of the doctrine of total depravity, and who replied that it 
was " a very good doctrine if people would only live up 
to it " (laughter). Now, the Prudential Committee, of 
course, instruct their missionaries to preach the doctrine 
of total depravity ; the missionaries preach it, and are in 
that respect very orthodox and sound ; but, in justice to 
them, it must be also said that they not only preach, but 
practise it (laughter). 

My friend, in one of his rapid incidental references, 
mentioned that ''the opposing Society, the American 
Missionary Association, had been brought to deal with 
slave-hiring among their own missionaries." The fact is 
not exactly as Mr. Beecher stated it. There is in Siam 
an institution resembling slavery. A man is in debt and 
cannot pay ; he is held in bondage till he can : the worst 
way in the world to pay a debt ! I am willing to admit 
that this is slavery. Now, one of the missionaries of the 
new Society, the Rev. Dr. Bradley, employed in his ser- 
vice a man who was held in that kind of bondage for 
debt. But what then ? The other missionaries of the 
station immediately came together and said, "This is 



39 

hiring slaves, and we must discountenance it." So, by a 
unanimous vote, they disapproved his act, and sent the 
record of their disapproval to the Executive Committee 
at New York. Their resolution was commended by the 
Committee, who sent back explicit word to the missiona- 
ries never again to hire a man whose labor brought no 
reward to himself. But can Mr. Beecher, or can anybody 
else, tell me why it was that Dr. Bradley fell into the 
error of employing slave labor ? I will tell you how it 
happened. Dr. Bradley had been newly received into 
the employment of the new Society, after having spent 
many years in the service of the American Board — and 
there is where he learned it ! (Laughter.) 

My friend said that the American Board had purged 
its missions from Caste. You know that caste among 
the Hindoos operates almost as slavery among us. Mr. 
Beecher had a right to speak of this freedom from caste as 
a credit to the Board. But how did tbe Board clear itself 
of caste ? Rev. Mr. Winslow was the first man among 
tbe missionaries to attack it. He excommunicated seven 
members from his Church because of their adherence to 
caste. Tell me what that caste was ! If a man of high 
caste was converted and came into the Church, and a 
man of low caste was converted and came into the 
Church, they preserved their caste inside, as they had 
preserved it outside, the Church ; like the Jews and the 
Samaritans, they would have no dealings .with each 
other. Mr. Winslow said to these men, " But you must 
sit and eat at the same communion-table, because you are 
all brethren in Christ " ; and because they refused, one 
caste standing on one side of the wall and another on the 
other, he excommunicated them. And afterwards the 
Madura mission excommunicated seventy-two members at 
one blow, mo3t of whom were catechiets, or native teachers, 
because not one of them would come into a house and 
eat bread with another of a different caste ! Now, I say, 
if the American Board regards the fact that one man 
will not eat bread with another in his own house such a 
sin that they mu3t cut off seventy-two church-members 
for the offence, is it not high time that the Prudential 



40 

Committee should say, "As we have cat off these seventy- 
two members for refusing to eat bread together, shall we 
not the rather cut off seventeen members who, for forty 
years, have been stealing the labor of black men and sell- 
ing their wives and children ? " For, am I unreasonable 
when I hold it to be a greater sin to enslave a man than 
to refuse to eat with him ? 

My friend's allusion, therefore, to the Board as having 
freed itself from caste was a very unfortunate one for his 
argument ; for the only thing we ask of the American 
Board is to free itself from slavery, with as much zeal as 
it freed itself from caste, and in exactly the same way — 
by cutting off the offender. Does not consistency require 
it ? If the excision be needed in one case, is it not more 
needed in the other ? 

The inquiry now arises, Why should we cut off our 
contributions from the Board just at the present time ? 
I will tell ycu why, and this was one reason why I 
brought this map. [Mr. Tilton here referred again to the 
map of Indian Territory.] You perceive tb»t on the 
north of Indian Territory lies Kansas, on the east Mis- 
souri, and on tbe south Arkansas. Now, sir, at this very 
moment secret machinations are going on, between the 
Southern Missourians and the Cherokee leaders, to bring 
in the Cherokee nation as a new territory by itself, and 
of course as a slave Territory. You will see the geogra- 
phical reason for this attempt. Missouri is to be free in 
a very few years (sagacious men on the ground say five 
years), not by emancipating her slaves, as many people 
at the East suppose, but by selling them to other mas- 
ters. Now, if they sell them, whither shall they be taken ? 
Not to Kansas, for that is free ; not to Arkansas, for the 
people are too poor to pay a high price ; not to Texas, 
for that is too far away. There is no place, then, where 
Missouri can empty out her slaves unless the Indian 
country can be made into slave States. The first pro- 
posed slave State is the Cherokee district. Therefore the 
politicians want to make it certain that this intermediate 
ground shall be opened to slavery, on the firm foundation 
of State governments, and hence their machinations to 



41 

accomplish that object. Now, against these secret, poli- 
tical plottings, remember thai; there is no indoctrina- 
tion of the gospel of liberty, no exertion of the moral 
power of the Church, no steady offsetting influence by the 
missionaries. How far has this game gone on? Mr. 
Sebastian, the other day, introduced a resolution into the 
Senate providing that the same laws and regulations 
which are usually given for the government of the terri- 
tories be extended to the Cherokee nation ; so that 
already the movement is on foot. 

Now, sir, tell me how that beautiful country that lies 
north of the Cherokees was saved to freedom ? [pointing 
to Kansas]. Mr. Beecher can tell ! It was done by the 
rousing of the whole North to the necessity of making 
Kansas a free State. It was by the universal excitement 
created in the North that Kansas was saved. And how 
did we save it ? I will tell you a story of a green bag. 
[Mr. Tilton here produced a green bag, which, on being 
opened, was found to contain a Sharp's rifle, which he 
held up to the audience.] I wish to remind Mr. Beecher 
how he helped to make Kansas a free State. 

Mr. Garbett— I rise to a point of order. The gentle- 
man's remarks are not to the question. What relation 
has this rifle to the American Board ? 

Mr. Tilton— I will tell you ! This instrument— well 
dinted by long use — was dedicated by the pastor of this 
Church to the cause of freedom in Kansas. 

Mr. Garbett continued his interruption oc the point 
of order, but was called to order by the chair. 

Mr. Tilton — This was one of the original twenty-five 
rifles for which Mr. Beecher, during the Kansas excite- 
ment, went around among the members of his Church 
making personal solicitation and continual appeal to 
every one, saying, " Give me money to buy twenty-five 
rifles for Kansas." This rifle has performed its mission ; 
it has seen good service there (applause). 

A Gentleman — Is it loaded ? (Laughter.) 

Mr. Tilton— No ! (laughter) — only with an argu- 
ment ! I wili not stop to tell you the history of this 
weapon ; only that it was carried three months by Capt. 



42 

John Brown (applause and hisses). It was present at 
the battle of Osawatomie (loud applause followed by 
hisses and renewed applause). 

The Chair — Gentlemen are provoking by their hisses 
the very thing they are trying to stop. I insist upon 
order. 

Mr. Tilton — I will tell you the reason why I exhibit 
this weapon. When that territory (pointing to Kansas) 
was in danger of falling into the hands of the Slave 
Power, Mr. Beecher's heart was touched to such a degree 
that he went around among you all, and, by personal 
appeal, procured the money to purchase this rifle, which 
was sent, with two dozen others, to guard the liberties of 
the people of Kansas. But at this moment, sir, at this 
very moment, the Cherokee country is in the same peril 
of coming into the Union as a new slave Territory, and I 
come to Mr. Beecher and ask him to send — what ? A 
rifle ? No. But only the testimony of a strong word ! 
1 ask him to remember his heroic appeals of '56, and now, 
when there is no necessity for weapons of carnal warfare, 
now that the time has come when the shedding of blood is 
no longer required, I ask him only to send forth, in 
place of his Sharp's rifles, an easier and milder testi- 
mony, which will make glad again the hearts of those free 
men who made Kansas free ! (Applause.) 

Sir, I have done with the gun (laughter). But let me 
say a word in conclusion. My friend, Mr. Benedict, the 
merchant, in the early part of this debate, charged me with 
chasing one idea, as he said, " up hill and down dale." 
Well, sir, here [pointing to the Cherokee country] are 
hills and dales ; and I know of one idea, sir, which I 
would chase up, and down, and over, and through these 
same hills and dales — an idea which I would chase through 
every cabin and hovel, through every cave and solitary 
place, through every forest and plantation ; I mean, sir, 
the idea that, thb beautiful country shall ever be brought 
into the Union as n, slavn State ! Yts, sir, I would chase 
it through every mission station, and every Church ; I 
would chase it up and down every wl ere, until it should 
be chased out even from the dingy Missionary House in 



43 

Pemberton Square ! I am not afraid of chasing one idea 
— particularly the idea that the American nation is to 
suffer the shame of a new slave State without a struggle 
to save itself against the encroachment, without an arous- 
ing of the North to this new peril of freedom, withouUhe 
sounding of a trumpet to the American Board, invoking 
it to utter the voice of it3 missions against so great a 
crime, without an appeal to this Church, that once raised 
its strong right hand, armed like a warrior, to defend the 
freedom of Kansas, to lift up at least its solemn warning 
voice against the wrong of wicked men seizing a new, 
young State and leading it into the Union in chains ! 

Sir, if I ever chase one idea, I only say, let it be an 
idea which is worth chasing ! (Laughter.) 

I tell you, friends and brethren, if the Cherokee nation 
is finallv made a slave State, then, in the language of the 
coveu,an>: which the minister of this Churchy reads from 
this pulpit to every new-coming member on his profession 
of faith, " This day and this hour will be everlasting wit- 
nesses against you " ! But if this Territory be saved as a 
free State, then, as of old the very stones cried out when 
men held their peace, the corner-stone of its freedom will 
bear witness that it was laid this ni^ht in this Church ! 

Sir, the name of this Church, and of its minister, will 
go into history. Many men in many lands, lovers of 
their race and watchers of the progress of the age, are 
looking to this Church as fulfilling many noble and gene- 
rous hopes. We are a marked Church ; this man is a 
marked minister. A city that is set upon a hill cannot 
be hid. We are watched from afar— across the sea, and 
in foreign lands! We are known everywhere as a 
Church that stands for the Rights of Men. I never have 
been in Europe, but I have been told that in the famous 
Church of St. Ouen,in one of the cities of France, if you 
look into the font yon will see, reflected in the water, the 
whole grand architecture of pillar, and arch, and roof 
So, when the world looks into Plymouth Church, it sees 
reflected in the light of this single question its whole his- 
tory, aud character, and glory 1 By and bye, when the 
long story of this great struggle comes to be written, 



44 



when the full record of these stormy times comes at 
last to be made up and completed, the question will be 
asked, " Where did this Church stand ? where did its 
minister stand ? " Ab, sir, if our answer to-night be not 
clear and true, we shall cast upon our fair fame a shadow 
and a cloud ! 

To-night there come to us from the prairies, through 
the long distance of a thousand miles, the piteous appeals 
of two thousand slaves in the land of the Cherokees to 
two thousand free men in Plymouth Church. They say 
to us tonight, " Brethren, we are in bonds ; we have reli- 
gious teachers among us who teach the strange religion 
that Christian men may L d us in unchristian bonds; 
we have heard of your Church, and of your minister ; we 
have been told that you are the friends of the oppressed ; 
we are in chains ; we send you an appeal for liberty. Bre- 
thren, hear us, and loose us from our bonds ! " 

Men and women of Plymouth Church ! This is the 
touching plea that comes to us at tbis hour ! Hark ! 
You can hear it at this moment, mingled with the sigh- 
ings of the west wind ! A plea that comes again, as once 
before, when we all listened and wept, fro-a under the 
thatched roof of the cabin of Uncle Tom! What 
answer shall we send back to these petitioners? If you 
cast your vote to sustain this Missionary Board, to 
endorse its complicity with the enslavement of these 
Christian slaves, you say to every one of those dusky men 
and women who are now crying out to this Church, 
" Hush your plea ! smother your cry ! wear your chains ! " 

Are you willing to make such a record, while God 
stands looking down from Heaven to read it ? In the 
name of justice, in the name of humanity — nay, sir, in the 
name of Christ's love, and for the sake of Christ's poor— 
I beseech you to stand with tbe oppressed against the 
oppressor ! I pray God to give us wisdom, and justice, 
and courage ! 

[Mr. Tilton took his seat acaid loud and long-continued 



applause.] 
Je'lG 






